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WebJunction is taking a giant leap forward for library trainers across the country, by developing a truly valuable collection of library technology training resources and assets. These materials will be free to download and reuse, which will help reduce your library’s burden of developing and finding training materials. We are working with library consultant Stephanie Gerding, author of The Accidental Technology Trainer: A Guide for Libraries, to identify and collect these resources. But we also need your help. Please take our quick survey to select the specific patron training topics of greatest interest to you, to guide Stephanie and WebJunction’s work. The survey will close on September 15, so don’t delay!
Start the survey »With such great turnout for last week’s Digitization & Preservation Symposium, I wanted to be sure folks know about the free upcoming OCLC webinar on September 22, Shine a light on your digital collections.
Michael Scott, Maryland Digital Cultural Heritage Coordinator, will discuss how she uses everything from social media to WorldCat.org to increase the visibility of their online collections.
Also hear from Suzanne Butte, OCLC Digital Services Consultant, about how other libraries, museums and archives use a wide variety of ways to increase awareness and promote their digital collections.
Register Now for September 22 Webinar»
View Archive for Digitization & Preservation Symposium »
We’re heading into a second week of double-header online WebJunction events and hope to see you there! This week’s Digitization and Preservation Symposium was attended by more than 500 people (!) and included the usual buzz of resource and idea sharing throughout. Be sure to review the archive and the questions and links gleaned from chat.
If you missed the first two sessions in the Libraries and Economic Development Series, you can still register for Tuesday’s final session, Going to Your Customer – Outreach and Strategic Partnerships, to learn how to boost your community’s economic development.
And if you’re involved in training of any sort, the second webinar next week is not to be missed. We have Emerging Leader Group N to thank for recruiting the Baltimore County Public Library Virtual Orientation Project for this webinar.
On Wednesday September 1, 2:00 Eastern, in collaboration with ALA Learning Roundtable we’re pleased to host Creating A Virtual Orientation for New Staff. Orienting new staff quickly to your organization is very important. A virtual orientation could be the key to a timely, comprehensive, standardized introduction to your library system. Discover advantages to implementing a virtual orientation for your workplace. Presenters Jean Mantegna, Sandy Lombardo, and Melissa Hepler have also shared their expertise in a recently published case study. Come join us on Wednesday if you want to hear how they planned, tested and implemented this exciting training project!
Learn Better Together – Discover the potential of cohort-based learning
You’ve heard the saying, “two heads are better than one.” As we all take the journey as life-long continuous learners, this statement rings ever true. Earlier this month, Betha and I had the opportunity to explore this idea of learning together for the joint conference for Pacific Northwest Library Association & Washington Library Association. During our session (sponsored by WLA/WALT), Learn Better Together – Discover the potential of cohort-based learning, we introduced some of the characteristics of cohort-based learning:
Learners move together through a program/event.
Learners form a group identity and engage the power of relationships.
Learners are active, not passive.
Learners take control of their learning.
We then shared 4 examples of successful cohort-based learning. Roddenbery Memorial Library led a Library Internet Skills Cohort working to increase knowledge and use of the Internet and social media tools. The Arizona State Library facilitated a leadership skills cohort – Arizona Library Institute, Virtual Extension (ALIVE!), a leadership program to help front line staff excel in their job at the public library A group of librarians led the Kansas Web Conference Groupies Cohort – leveraging the 2010 Handheld Librarian Online Conference from their offices and with others in their state. WebJunction led web-conferencing and self-paced course creation cohorts helping WebJunction admins maximize the tools they had available.
Diving into a new idea or technology with others on your immediate team, in other branches or within your state is a great way to harness existing motivation and light the fire of excitement for others who aren’t quite sure what the fuss is all about. Whether stepping in to basic internet skills, developing leadership skills, exploring handheld technology or instructional design strategies for self-paced courses, cohort-based learning can build a momentum for learning that just doesn’t happen alone.
While no learning effort is, well, effortless there are some basic steps to take to build your own learning cohort. Start small. Ask a friend to explore a new topic with you and set a time once a week to discuss or explore. Then, build that idea out with the colleagues on your floor. Before you know it, not only are you building your skills you are also sharing ideas and building relationships with others that can take your work further than ever expected.
WebJunction sponsored my “Inside, Outside, & Online” program at the joint PNLA/WLA conference in Victoria BC last week. I thought you might like to see my slides from that presentation.
The program is based on my book (same title), available from ALA Editions here. (Sorry, I couldn’t help but insert a tiny bit of self promotion!)
The program runs through the five elements of community building that we uncovered in our research for this work (needs assessment, service design & delivery, marketing, evaluation, and sustainability), and provides pictures and examples from many of the library staff that I talked with throughout the process. Embedded throughout are a number of questions for the audience – as I invited them to consider how their personal and organizational experiences related to the stories that I relayed. I invite you to do the same … I’d love to hear from you!
We’re gearing up for Wednesday’s special 2-hour Digitization & Preservation Symposium, from 2:00-4:00 pm Eastern and we hope you can join us! The session will feature presentations on current trends and practical approaches to library digitization and preservation projects. One of the presenters unfortunately had to cancel due to a family emergency, but we’ll have plenty of time for the other presentations and extra time for your questions and comments.
Panelists include:
The PNLA/WLA 2010 conference in picturesque Victoria BC provided my first opportunity to give a retrospective report on Project Compass, the year-long, IMLS-funded program to work with State Libraries and focus on building public library capacity to meets the needs of a workforce in crisis. After a whirlwind year, I could start to take a few steps back and look at what we (the big WE of state and public libraries all over the country) have accomplished in response to the economic downturn and the dramatic increases in demand for library services.
My slide presentation describes the scope, goals and phases of the overall project, and then focuses on the past, ongoing and future actions of the states represented at the Pacific Northwest conference—Idaho, Montana and Washington. To get the full-throated understanding of all the amazing work that State Libraries are doing, browse the list of Showcases presented by participants at the Project Compass summits. Nobody is resting on their laurels either, as evidenced by the list of projects that are being implemented in the coming year.
The most rewarding aspect of the year with Project Compass has been engaging in a vibrant knowledge exchange with the library community, not just with participants at the in-person and online summits, but with library people everywhere. From those who attended my conference session, I got to hear perspectives from the front lines and from rural libraries about what was needed to serve job-seekers. I hadn’t heard before about the need for wifi printers so users could print directly from their laptops and not have to queue up for the public computers. Or the need for space in small libraries; job-seeking can be an all-day effort and the job-seekers impact the tiny spaces of many rural libraries.
For ongoing connections, there is the community of practice for Workforce Resources on WebJunction. This section burgeoned since the start of the project. It is truly a community effort with lots of room for continued growth. If you’re on Twitter, use the #libs4jobs hashtag to broadcast news and events about the library-workforce connections. If you’re not a tweeter, you can still see freshly updated posts in the Twitter badge on the main section page.
Stay tuned for Year Two. Project Compass continues to augment public library services to the unemployed with a follow-on grant from IMLS.
While headed over the border from Washington, headed to Victoria Canada last week (which is on an island btw) to attend the joint WLA/PNLA 2010 conference, most everyone I talked to was struck with the loveliness of it all. Sure, the logistics were a bit of a challenge to some extent. Also, everyone was keenly aware of and felt grateful and fortunate for being able to attend during these tough economic times. It all actually helped us appreciate being able to go more, and made us all extra eager to share what we saw and learned.
(What a view on the commute from Seattle to Victoria on the Clipper. Wow!)
Before I mention the competency learning goodness Betha and I got to be a part of, check out the wide variety of *ahem* unusual ribbons at the registration desk. Hanging a “My Ribbon Is Better Than Than Yours”, “Know It All”, “Politically Correct”, “I READ YOUR EMAIL”, “OCD”, “Been There, Done That” or “Worker Bee” on your name badge added some fun to the proceedings right off the bat. Too funny! Unexpected little things always add up to a rich conference experience, plus they are mostly just plain funny, so it seemed like the thing to share.
Aside from all that, the real highlight for me at WLA/PNLA was being able to present to a live audience about Library Competencies with our very own Betha Gutsche (shown in that session presenting below).
Our Friday session was a great back and forth with lots of practical info for attendees. The description is below, but in addition to what that tells you about the session, each attendee got a copy of the Competency Index and had a chance for some constructive back and forth.
“Competencies: Buzzword or Stepping Stone?
You’ve heard the buzz about competencies, but do you have a clear idea of how to use them for your library? You may be wary of starting down this path without knowing how to define competencies, much less how to implement them. It’s time for straight talk about competencies. How can they help you achieve your staff development goals? Learn more about strategies and resources from libraries that have been there. We can help make your journey far smoother!”
While that session is over now, you can find much of the info we discussed, including past events with Betha and Michael and some of the folks who have actually *used* competencies to help their libraries and staff grow and thrive here: http://www.webjunction.org/competencies.
Additionally, on the topic on competencies we’ll also be having a couple more live events here at WebJunction about competencies before the year is up and you’ll be able to attend those as well, so stay tuned!
(Here’s Betha sharing some of here knowledge of Library Competencies-and cracking some pretty good jokes along the way).
While this is just a tiny taste of the great time had at WLA/PNLA by WJ folks, we hope it was fun to see and also hope that you know we are eager to help you and all our fellow library professionals learn whatever helpful info we can. And hopefully we’ll see you next time we are out and about!
First slide of today's IFLA presentation
Many thanks to everyone who attended the WebJunction presentation today at IFLA. This presentation was part of a joint session of the Knowledge Management, Continuing Professional Development and Workplace Learning, and Information Technology sections.
Visit the IFLA site to read all of the papers that were presented in Session 107 — it was wonderful to be part of a session that included examples of knowledge management and staff training projects from around the world.
A few years ago, I had the privilege of contributing to Trends in E-Learning for Library Staff, a snapshot of how library staff in the U.S. viewed, and used, e-learning in 2005.
This spring and summer, Jennifer Peterson and I interviewed libraries to develop a new snapshot of how U.S. library organizations are utilizing online training tools in their staff development initiatives. Our resulting report is less about how online learning is viewed … in fact, we started with the assumption that online learning is an accepted, even expected, component of training programs today. From there, we examined why online learning was incorporated into the training program, which tools were used, how learner collaboration and ownership were encouraged, what successes were realized, and asked the program coordinators/trainers to offer any advice for other library organizations pursuing similar programs.
The paper we wrote was accepted for inclusion in this year’s IFLA program, and I’ll be presenting our findings this coming Friday, after immersing myself in the international library community for a few days.
I’ve also posted the paper, with practical approaches for adding online learning to your training program, and case studies about the training programs profiled on WebJunction, in our Training Program Management section.
Read the entire paper, or check out the case studies for each of the training programs profiled:
And on a related note, be sure to join us on September 1 for a free webinar with the folks from Baltimore County Public Library on Creating A Virtual Orientation for New Staff.
Free hour-long webinar on August 3, 2:00 pm Eastern.
Libraries are looking for ways to be better prepared for disaster response and recovery. Join guest presenter Lauren Mandel, research coordinator at the Information Use Management & Policy Institute at Florida State University’s College of Communication and Information, as she introduces a new key service role, Get to Know Your Emergency Operations Center (EOC), to the existing Hurricane Preparedness & Response for Florida Public Libraries Project. The Florida-based project helps libraries throughout the U.S. serve their communities through partnerships with fellow responders (e.g., emergency management, local government and other agencies) and become a safe haven, recovery center, information hub and evacuee resource. Come learn how this project can inform your library’s disaster preparedness plan and how your library can play an important role in community preparedness and recovery by working with your EOC. With updates to service roles and resources since the project’s fall webinar and relevance to any sort of partnership development, you won’t want to miss this session!
Free 30-minute webinar series on three Tuesday afternoons in August: 17th, 24th, 31st
Communities across the country are pursuing a burgeoning strategy known as economic gardening, which works to stimulate the development of small business with the goal of growing a healthy, community-scale economy. Libraries can be key players in supporting and facilitating their success. This Libraries and Economic Development webinar series will expand your thinking about the powerful connection. Your host for the series is Shelley Walchak, a mover-and-shaker with the official title of Library Community Programs Senior Consultant at the Colorado State Library.
Webinar 1: How to Make Your Library Entrepreneur-Friendly
Tuesday, Aug 17, 4pm Eastern/1pm Pacific
Christine Hamilton-Pennell literally wrote the book. She is an articulate proponent of libraries’ support for local entrepreneurs. Learn specific steps your library can take to connect with and support its local business community. If you’re at all intrigued by the concept of economic gardening, this webinar is a must-see. Hamilton-Pennell introduces the strategies and lays the groundwork for their practical application, which will be covered in the following two webinars.
Webinar 2: Turning Your Databases into Business for Your Customers
Tuesday, Aug 24, 4pm Eastern/1pm Pacific
Your library may already have the tools at hand (or close by) to help stimulate economic development in your community and you don’t have to be a trained business reference librarian to use them. Presenters Terry Zarsky and Kathleen Rainwater will give a guided tour through the best databases for small business information.
Webinar 3: Going to Your Customer – Outreach and Strategic Partnerships
Tuesday, Aug 31, 4pm Eastern/1pm Pacific
How do you let the business community know that your library is primed and ready to help? Presenters Suzanne Kaller and Colbe Galston will talk about how to get the word out to Chambers of Commerce, small business development centers, community groups and government entities.
For more information and to access archives and registration:
http://www.webjunction.org/workforce-resources/articles/content/103122377
To help WebJunction members stay better connected around topics of shared interest, we’ve just rolled out some improvements to how Groups function. Those of you who are members or creators of groups on WebJunction should have received an email explaining some of these updates, but here’s the scoop for all.
Email notifications. For any group you join or currently belong to, you can now elect to receive an email alert when
You can choose to receive these alerts hourly, daily, weekly–or not at all.
Group administration: If you have created a group, you have now been designated as Group Admin. This role gives you the power to
Groups directory: This new directory lists all of the groups created on that particular WebJunction site, in alphabetical order and including the description and number of members in the group. If you use a state-specific version of WebJunction, you will want to check out both the directory on that site and the central WebJunction site. When signed into WebJunction, you can join or create a new group right from the directory. The directory also features the most recently created groups and spotlights a particular group to check out. You can still use search to find groups, regardless of where they were created, but we hope you enjoy browsing the directory.
The Groups User Guide has been updated to include the most current instructions for how to create, join, and manage groups. If you encounter any issues with groups, please contact support@webjunction.org.
With these new enhancements, we expect we’ll see even more innovative uses of the groups feature. We look forward to seeing you connect and collaborate using these free tools made available to all in libraryland.
Want to learn more about how to effectively use groups and other WebJunction tools? Come to our free July 29 webinar, How to Make the Most of WebJunction!
This spring we surveyed a random sample of WebJunction members to ask what one topic they would like to see WebJunction focus on in the coming year, based on current needs. This doesn’t mean that we will only concentrate on one topic; but because our member community represents a wide range of libraries, staff roles, and interests, we need to understand where to prioritize our efforts.
In response to this question, 23% said, “More technology, please.” Because “technology” is a very broad topic, we dug further to identify specific subjects that are of highest interest to you. According to your feedback and your activity on WebJunction, the top subjects are:
Another 61% of survey responses were on topics around library management or services. Those subjects that received a notable number of mentions are:
Finally, another 10% of survey respondents simply stated that they wanted to ensure that staff continue to have opportunities to build their skills and see the value of doing so. (Our mission is to do the same, so let’s work together to sustain it!)
We have already begun to build the content and programming around the above hot topics. This month we are spotlighting the subject of social networking and web tools; we’ll be talking about staff training in September, and services to teens/YA in November. And save the date for our free online conference on Customer Service in December. We have a lot more up our sleeves, so stay tuned to Crossroads, Twitter, Facebook, and our new homepage for news about what’s happening on WebJunction.
As library staff are finding their access to learning inhibited by rising prices and falling budgets, WebJunction is offering more free learning programs and resources than ever before. Join us for these upcoming events!
And we’ve announced our second Online Conference, Serving the 21st Century Patron, coming December 1 & 2, 2010. Topics will focus on the changing needs, approaches, challenges and opportunities related to customer service in your 21st Century library. Stay tuned for details coming this fall, but in the meantime, mark your calendars for this free 2-day event!
A Six-State Virtual Government Information Conference will be held in August. This is not a WebJunction event, but the organizers are using WebJunction.org to provide information about the conference. Here is what the announcement reads (as published in the Government Information in the 21st Century section):
Join your colleagues from Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming (the Six States) in our first online conference. This conference will take place August 11-13 and 16-17, 2010. It will be a free conference open to all, but we ask that all attendees register.
We’ll kick off the conference with a keynote presentation by Gabriela Schneider, communications director for the Sunlight Foundation, a national organization that promotes transparency and accountability in government focused on digitization of government data and easy info accessibility for all. We’re also planning exciting sessions on using Census data, tracking use of e-resources, maps and GIS, and more. A preliminary schedule is posted on the conference website.
Schedule conflicts? Don’t worry. You can attend any or all of the sessions or view the archived presentations at a later date.
To participate you need an internet connection, OPAL conference software pre-loaded on your computer, speakers and a microphone (optional). Additional information can be found at the conference website.
This sounds like a great (and free!) opportunity!
In a survey to a random sample of WebJunction members this spring, respondents answered a question on how frequently they used online tools, either in or outside of their professional life. We found the results interesting. Nearly half of the respondents (49%) use email “listservs” daily. One-third of the respondents (35%) use professional or social networking sites daily. A quarter or less of the respondents use the following daily: online news or magazines (21%), blogs (14%), RSS feeds (14%), bookmarking sites (10%), wikis (9%), employment sites (6%) and online courses (3%).The chart below shows the full results.
When we separated the responses by library type, we saw some notable differences. Academic library respondents are more likely to use the following online tools daily than public library respondents:
Significant differences were found among locations as well. Urban library respondents (72%) are more likely to use email listservs daily than suburban (57%) and rural (45%) library respondents. Also, urban library respondents (18%) are more likely to use RSS feeds daily than rural library respondents (9%). Suburban library respondents (40%) are more likely to use professional or social networking sites daily than urban (31%) and rural (31%) library respondents. It was also reported that more than one quarter (28%) of respondents use web-based content (on blogs, wikis, social networking sites and more) toward professional development.
Finally, when we compare these results with those to a similar question posed to our members a year ago, we see evidence of some shifts in online tool use. In 2009, 61% of respondents reported using listservs daily, which is 12% higher than this year. Meanwhile, the percent of respondents who report never using social networking sites dropped from 39% to 30%. And online reading seems to have decreased as well, with 11% drops in those who report reading blogs or online news sites daily. The trend away from email toward social networking sites like Facebook and twitter is not exclusive to library staff: this shift has been reported in the media as happening across the globe. So libraries can expect that patrons will be more likely to want to interact with their library via social networking tools and to expect that their library will support their use of these tools on the publicly accessible computers.
If you stop by www.webjunction.org today, you’ll notice a brand new design for our homepage. This makeover was done in response to members’ feedback to us that they can feel overwhelmed by the amount of text and information on the website. Because WebJunction is a constantly expanding universe of content on a broad range of library-related topics, we have a ton of text to try to manage and present–there’s no simple way around that. But, with the help of a good web designer who knows his way around CSS, we can style and position the text in a way that is easier on the eye. You can also check out his work on the refreshed About Us page.
For members who use their state library’s customized version of WebJunction, you will see changes to your homepage roll out throughout the month of July.
We’d love to hear what you think about the new look. Drop a comment here or in the WebJunction Feedback discussion forum.
Here’s to Maurice Coleman for providing a virtual update from ALA, especially precious to those of us watching from afar…who knows how he found time to upload the more than 20 videos he captured at the WebJunction-sponsored Learning RoundTable Training Showcase, but thank you Maurice!
Here are some highlights in the video showcase:
If you’re not a member of ALA’s Learning Roundtable, this set of videos will surely inspire you to get involved!
And we were pleased to hear that Betha’s session with Sandra Smith went well, all about Building with Competencies. Their slides and resource handout are now available on WebJunction.
Safe travels to all who will be traveling this week!
WebJunction’s Calendar is filling up with webinars! Join us in the coming months to explore everything from the Federal Workforce System to digitization & preservation, and from trustees to orienting new staff virtually.
Next Thursday’s webinar, Expanding Your World Through Web Conferencing, will showcase success stories of library staff who are using web conferencing tools to host virtual conferences, produce e-learning activities, collaborate with remote staff, and host virtual meetings. As budgets tighten and as technologies improve, more and more staff are gathering together both online and blended with face2face settings to learn from each other and to get work done. Come hear about the benefits of meeting virtually and learn how a variety of web conferencing tools are being integrated with other technologies and in other settings to overcome both cost and distance. Join panelists Karen Burns, Cindi Hickey and Jennifer Peterson on Thursday, July 1 at 1:00 pm Eastern, for a session filled with experience and expertise in online engagement!
And speaking of online conferencing, mark your calendars for WebJunction’s second online conference coming December 1 & 2 focused on Serving the 21st Century Patron. See you online!